December 30, 2015

I've always proclaimed that Animation in general is the most refined of all the art forms, however out of all the different styles and techniques of animation, I've always sworn that stop-motion is the the most highly skilled, highly focused, highly elegant and seemingly most difficult of them all. I'm so glad in to see more spotlights on stop-motion animators and their methodology and process these past couple years.

December 04, 2015

December 03, 2015

An nice interactive video adventure in which you play an explorer on a mission to find the Northwest Passage. Produced by Tank & Pascal Blais studio for Canadian Heritage, and Canada's 150th anniversary.

December 02, 2015

After over 10 years on ice, Samurai Jack is heading back to Cartoon Network next year. Adult Swim just announced that Genndy Tartakovsky, the animator behind the acclaimed series as well as favorites like Dexter's Laboratory and the animated Star Wars: Clone Wars microseries, is back to produce a new season that will land on Toonami in 2016.

Samurai Jack debuted in 2001, and, over the course of four seasons and 52 episodes, went on to become a cult favorite. The series follows a samurai only known as Jack, who is sent to the distant future by the evil demon Aku. The series earned two Emmys during its run, but was cancelled in 2004, cutting Jack's adventures short and leaving his grand adventure without a proper ending. Now, the journey can continue!

November 23, 2015

SGCH has provided homes and social and economic opportunities to the vulnerable and low income people of NSW for 30 years. This film features the true story of Morgan, who with the help of SGCH rose above a troubled upbringing.

November 21, 2015

Before Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson, before Chuck Jones and Jackie Chan, there was Buster Keaton, one of the founding fathers of visual comedy. And nearly 100 years after he first appeared onscreen, we’re still learning from him. Here we have Tony Zhou talking about the artistry (and the thinking) behind his gags. Press the CC button to see the names of the films.

November 16, 2015

Teenagers Birdboy and Dinky have decided to escape from an island devastated by ecological catastrophe: Birdboy by shutting himself off from the world, Dinky by setting out on a dangerous voyage in the hope that Birdboy will accompany her.

WHADDUP FISH! is a short animation about Scientist who is looking for extraordinary species deep under the ocean surface. When he stumbles upon Dumbo octopus he immediately decides to follow this cute little creature, which leads him to an unexpected underwater event and into DEEP trouble.

Flooby Nooby had a chance to chat with Tomek about the film.

How did you first come up with the concept for this short?

This is rather a long story, but I think that I need to clarify the process we had to take. At University of Arts in Poznań (where I’m studying) every student works on his/her own animation by themselves until completion, but me and my colleague wanted to try collaborating on something together, so we got permission from our professor do to so. It was back in the 2014 academic year so it’s one year since then and the idea had evolved from my old unfinished animation about a castaway to the concept I had now for this film. We liked the idea of setting the story in the ocean, but we wanted to make it more visually appealing and intense. So we decided to put it underwater and add mermaids and the a big party. The beginning of developing this shirt film was slow-going, but I was always filled with enthusiasm and hope as I pressed forward. Our main goal was quality... and because of that we missed our first semester deadline, and 'Whaddup Fish!' became a two-semester project, of course it was accompanied by the usual problems and disappointment throughout production. It was a fantastic learning experience!

After some pitfalls and with the awareness of how much work was needed to achieve the final result, I worked on 'Whaddup Fish!' day and night at every spare moment I could squeeze in. After a short while my partner on the production began to give up his responsibilities and Had to finish the film on my own, I struggled a bit to make my professor understand that my partner abandoning the production would cause delays for my film. I had put sooo much effort into this project, and I cared about it so much that I decided to finish what I started. 'Whaddup Fish' was completely revised and re-done by myself, and with an ungoldy amount of work done, it finally got completed.

How long and detailed was your storyboarding stage?

Storyboarding was quite difficult because I wanted to fit it my whole story in less than 1 minute. First part (before the party) was easier, but when it came to the epic party, I did lots of work to show keep the main idea clear and avoid having the audience getting lost in all that dancing.

Did you have any specific inspirations that you drew from for the color design?

'Whaddup Fish!' is my first animation in color, and I was apprehensive about that. I’m rather systematic and compulsive person, so first I dive into lots color theories, and researched underwater photography. Then I analyzed lots of animation which were set underwater. I think that I started with 'Finding Nemo' but as time went by, I realized that I have pretty solid knowledge and it’s time for me to leave all the references behind and start to create my own color script. I wanted the color palettes to support the story, and I’m pretty happy with the end result. Especially because it’s the first time I did a color script. I can tell you now that producing color script is a life saver for your film!

There's plenty of FX animation, 2D traditional, plus lots of glows, blurs, and lighting effects made with (After Effects?), where or how did you learn to use these techniques?

Thank you for noticing this! I always take care of every little thing in my animations. Somehow from the beginning of my studying at Univeristy of Arts in Poznań I was fastinated with traditional animation but at the same time I experimented a lot with After Effects and how it can bring more depth to flat animation. Now, after a few animations done solely in After Effects, I was comfortable with this software, and I use it to add dimension to my own personal traditional animations. Basically, I look at some great animation and nature, then I just try to find the way to translate from what I observe, and learned from it to later apply it to my own work.

You are a student at University of Arts in Poznań, how in-depth is the course? Did you enjoy learning the process and principles of animation?

First of all we must take a 3 year BFA and then 2 years of MFA. And I’m at the last year of the MFA course so this is my graduation year. About the course; we briefly review the animation principles and a bit of theory, then we go straight to animating. Professors insist to make “your own personal animation" without basic knowledge and it ends up unreadable for viewers and unpleasant to watch. But on the other hand if you know what you want (like me) it’s a good time to learn on you own without worrying about finding a job. This lack of fundamentals motivates me, because at the end of my education I will become alumni of a 5 years animation program and the industry demands certain skills from its employees, so I push myself harder to work on my own to reach that level of quality that employers are looking for. So overall, I consider myself as self-taught.

How long did it take you to make the film from concept to completion?

If we are only talking about the second version; it took about 5 months.

Any future plans for another independent short film?

Now I need to make my graduation short and for that I received a Scholarship from Animation Educators Forum/ASIFA-Hollywood. I have an idea, but I don’t want to talk about it just yet. I'm assembling a team of talented people, and I hope to make it a great short, so wish me luck!

November 09, 2015

Director/Story Man/Designer Bob Kurtz started out working on The Alvin Show, Roger Ramjet and Linus the Lionhearted, and went on to a long and distinguished career directing commercials, here's some of his best.

Brutus, a great warrior from a distant planet, is ripped from his past and taken to the future of an evil Overlord. The Overlord holds Brutus’ family hostage, and binds Brutus in a temporal harness, forcing him to become an Infinite Gladiator, fighting opponents throughout time and space. Created By: Joe Croson Animation: Exit 73 Studios

October 25, 2015

Sofia Coppola is the master when it comes to making films about loneliness. 'Somewhere' is a beautiful example of such a film. This video was created to highlight how Coppola has used shot composition to communicate loneliness.

October 24, 2015

Between Frames presents Shooting for Balance, a study of the use of symmetry in Nicolas Winding Refn's 'Only God Forgives'.

"I believe this film can be summed up by the old Chinese philosophy symbol Yin & Yang i.e. the good that can be found in evil and the evil in good. Nicolas Winding Refn uses many techniques to convey this from the lighting used to music played in a scene. This video aims to help viewers look at how a shot is framed and what the balance of a shot can tell us about the power or motives of an object or character."

GIMP - GIMP is a well known free alternative to Photoshop with similar features

Mischief Free Version - With six essential brushes, a basic palette of colors and an infinite vector canvas, Mischief-Free is perfect for hashing out ideas, life drawing, and endless doodles

MyPaint - MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital painters, and comes with 39 different brushes

Verve Painter- Verve is a small painting application that uses fluid dynamics and brushes to push the paint around, though it is still in development.

Inkscape- Inkscape is an open-source professional quality vector graphics software with sophisticated drawing tools with capabilities comparable to Adobe Illustrator.

FireAlpaca - A similar program to Paint Tool Sai that offers features such as a snap feature which creates a variety of perspective overlays.

MediBang Paint - A free lightweight painting program for Windows, Mac Os and Android with cloud saving to allow users to easily switch between platforms.

SpeedyPainter - Basic painting program with a simple layout and features such as perspective grids and reference view mode

3D Modelling

Google Sketchup - Drawing-based tool for architects, designers, builders, makers and engineers who design for the physical world. SketchUp Make is a free version and SketchUp Pro is a paid version with additional functionality.

Sculptris- A free, introductory digital sculpting tool, a great stepping stone for digital sculptors, created by the makers of Zbrush.

Blender - A powerful application with full-fledged professional tools, Blender has a wide community and resources to help you learn.

SculptGL- This handy modelling program works online in your browser and is compatible with wacom tablets

Animation

Synfig - Synfig Studio is a free and open-source 2D animation software, designed as powerful industrial-strength solution for creating film-quality animation using a vector and bitmap artwork.

EmoFuri - EmoFuri is a new animation software that helps artists easily animate photoshop illustrations in a 2D-3D style.It uses PSD files of character illustrations to animate them.

Pencil2D- Pencil2D is an open-source animation/drawing software that lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation using both bitmap and vector graphics.

Live2D- This increasingly popular 2D-3D animation software is similar to Emofuri with sample models available to experiment with, and is also available in english.

Pixel Art

Piskel- An online pixel art app that lets you animate pixel art with a live preview of your work.

Piq - While it doesn’t have the best looking layout, this online tool has lots of interesting features including a colour-drift tool that’s great for making colour palettes.

Etc

Thisissand - An online fun and unique playground for creating colourful sandscapes, also comes in an app version

Flame Painter - A free demo of the full program, it allows you to try out the flame generator and change different brush settings and paint your own flame paintings

October 15, 2015

This video explores how director Bennett Miller consistently uses wide shots throughout Foxcatcher to highlight the physical and emotional distance between characters, their situations and how we, the audience relate to them.

October 13, 2015

Winner of numerous awards, this one-hour documentary received its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, followed by a New York Film Society screening at Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum. The film illuminates the creation of Francis Ford Coppola's landmark San Francisco film company American Zoetrope, set against the changing landscape of American cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Narrated by Richard Dreyfuss.

October 11, 2015

This is The Philippines is the most disaster-prone country in the world and Climate Change is a contributing factor. This video, commissioned by Oxfam, is an educational piece explaining how acting locally can have a global effect.
Produced by The Magnificent Itch

September 23, 2015

September 22, 2015

Directed and animated by Yoann Hervo
with the help of Hugo Moreno
Sound design by Florian Calmer
Music by Valentin Ducloux
This opening is just a small part of a collaboration project made up by Charles Huettner, Ivan Dixon and James Hatley.
The original idea was to invite some animators to produce, in their own style, a short story in the Simpsons universe.
Despite the fact that the project hasn't been achieved, I wanted to finish what I started.

September 19, 2015

September 18, 2015

This animated series from 1994 still holds up quite well.
Much darker and more mature in content from the usual Disney shows of the time. After re-watching it recently I was surprised how well structured the plots are and well developed the characters were. This 5 part pilot episode stretched out to a feature length of 2.5 hours and cover a lot of ground quite well; introducing you to a large cast of characters and multiple timelines.

Gargoyles features a species of nocturnal creatures known as gargoyles that turn to stone during the day. After spending a thousand years in a petrified state, the gargoyles (who have been transported from medieval Scotland) are reawakened in modern-day New York City, and take on roles as the city's secret night-time protectors.

The show is a mixture of urban and medieval fantasy within a science-fiction/action/adventure genre. The writing is surprisingly engaging, and the animation is a style that is since long-gone, like a more squash and stretch version of Young Justice. You don't see this classic Disney/Japanese, high-quality 90s era of traditional-paper-and-pencil animation too often anymore.

The series was critically acclaimed and is noted for its relatively dark tone, complex story lines, Shakespearean themes, large cast of celebrity voice actors, and its character arcs that were heavily employed throughout the series.

September 16, 2015

Bob Camp is an animator, cartoonist, comic book artist, director, and producer. Camp has been nominated for two Emmys, a CableACE Award, and an Annie Award for his work on The Ren & Stimpy Show. These writing and drawing lessons and opinions came from his old blog.

Short Cartoon Writing Tips!

OK, here are my ideas about writing a funny 11 minute TV cartoon.

Most important!
Know your characters and how they relate to one other. Take any great comedy team and you'll find that the humor is based on the personality of each character and the dynamics with the other characters.

When writing cartoons, do not exclude cartoonists from the process! Writers are great and all but they cannot draw a funny expression or work out the poses and timing necessary to make a funny cartoon. Believe it or not there are lots of really funny cartoonists that write funny too!
Imagine if writers wrote the great Termite Terrace 40's and 50's era Warners cartoons and Bob, Chuck and the boys were excluded from the process and forced to work from scripts.

Now I'm not dissing writers here. They are a huge important part of the industry and deserve as much credit and support as anybody on the crew. Unless they suck.

Use outlines and not scripts. This leaves the storyboard artist (who in my mind is really directing the artistic vision of the cartoon) room for his or her mind to work out the funniest gags for the cartoon and write dialogue that fits the gag not the other way around.
If you must use scripts then NEVER write more than 11 pages for an 11 minute cartoon.
A PAGE A MINUTE!
A PAGE A FUCKING MINUTE! OK?!

Do your self a favor and watch the funniest 7 or 11minute cartoons you can think of.
Watch each one over and over with a notepad and a stop watch. Note each sequence paying attention to it's purpose (like setup, gag, payoff etc.). Note the type of gags and how the comedy pays off. Is the reveal funny? How does timing make the joke work, or not.
You will begin to see patterns that are typical to an individual studio, director, story artist and animator. Watch old 2 reel shorts like Laurel and Hardy, the Stooges too. It's what I grew up watching and I learned so much about comedy from them,

When writing an 11 minute cartoon, don't get all wound up in plots, secondary plots and too many characters. This is no way to make a funny cartoon. Keep it simple! Avoid stereotypes and tired old ideas.

Come up with a funny idea. If the initial idea isn't funny then don't bother going forward with it.
Write down about 20 one line ideas.
Stimpy's invention- Stimpy is an inventor. His latest invention makes Ren really mad. Stimpy must invent a helmet that makes Ren happy against his nature.
Stimpy's Chicken- Stimpy falls in love with the chicken that he was preparing for Ren's dinner. He elopes with the chicken and Ren is tortured with Hunger and jealousy.

Now you get the four or five funniest bastards (who all have lists of one line ideas) into the same room and go at it coming up with gags and making quick sketches and laughing their asses off. We used to rent a suite at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood for a week and write the whole season. That was fun!

You have your idea for the cartoon. Now you go through all of the gags and lay them out eliminating the least funny. Start with the setup, put the best gags in order building to the funniest and ending in a ironic funny ending.
Set-up, series of gags, ironic pay-off.

Don't be satisfied with something that is only amusing keep bouncing ideas around until you are actually laughing outloud.

Type it up into about 3 or 4 pages and let the storyboard artist do his job.

Afterward it's good to pin up the board so the director can work on fine-tuning the gags with the other board artists helping out. Always be open to upping the comedy at every level. A funny board can be made ten times funnier by pushing character layoutout and animation. The acting and adlibs that the voice actor came up pushed the comedy again!

Notes on character design and posing.

Here are a few quick character studies for proportion, style and movement.
Gotta do lots of drawing to bring a character to life!

September 15, 2015

Besides changing the face of animation by bringing the world the invention of the Rotoscope, as well as the concept and animation technique of “Follow the Bouncing Ball” sing-alongs, Max Fleischer and his studio also pioneered a revolutionary technique in animation, known as the “Stereoptical Process”.

In this process, a circular, 3-D model of a background - a diorama - is built to the scale of the animation cells. It allowed for a spectacular sense of depth and dimension, long before Ub Iwerks came up with the Multiplane. Within the model setup, the animation cells could be placed at varying levels from the scenery, and even between objects, so that foreground elements could pass in front of them, adding to the dimensional effect. It was an effective method for panning and tracking shots, which would require a turn of the table with each photographed cell of animation.
The process was used in many of the studio’s cartoons, particularly in their longer, “two-reel” shorts, such as Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936), Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (1937), and Betty Boop in Poor Cinderella (1934) - the only color (albeit in two-strip Cinecolor), theatrical cartoon ever made starring the iconic animated songstress, which features her as a redhead!

September 13, 2015

September 11, 2015

For nearly four decades at Disney, Glen Keane animated some the most compelling characters of our time: Ariel from The Little Mermaid, the titular beast in Beauty and the Beast, and Disney’s Tarzan, to name just a few. The son of cartoonist Bil Keane (The Family Circus), Glen learned early on the importance of holding onto your childhood creativity—and how art can powerfully convey emotion. Keane has spent his career embracing new tools, from digital environments to 3D animation to today’s virtual reality, which finally enables him to step into his drawings and wander freely through his imagination. At FoST, he'll explore how to tap into your own creativity, connecting to emotion and character more directly than ever before. Witness him creating sculptural animation drawings using the Steam VR Tiltbrush.

August 31, 2015

Animators, visual effects artists, compositors, CG artists, digital painters, and all those who do long, long, long hours sitting at a desk, your posture can suffer greatly. You're looking into a monitor, hands on a keyboard, or gripping that Wacom Pen with large amounts of time sitting at a computer, barely moving all day long, it can make your neck and back sore.

Here's a good little video for exercises to help with your back and posture.

Here are exercises for preventing tendinitis and carpal tunnel, and they apply very well for animators, VFX artists and CGI artists & technicians of all kinds doing long days of work gripping that stylus pen.

In this clip, the focus is on a few hand stretching exercises that are essential to every guitarist's warm-up routine, of course these stretches apply very well to animators as well. These types of exercises can really go a long way to keeping your hands healthy and in good condition.

Reminding animators and artists to sit up straight, pull their shoulders back, pull their necks straight usually isn't too effective or long-lasting. We all sit for long periods of time, deeply focused on our work, not thinking about our postures or the grip on the pen. Eventually we all slouch down, our heads and necks stick out in front of us, whether we work with a tablet-and-monitor, or looking down at an angle on a Cintiq or some other graphic monitor system, or down on a flat table using good 'ol paper and markers.

So the big thing is to take breaks, get up and walk around, because the main cause of your neck sticking out, your shoulders rolling in, your eyes getting dry & sore, and your back curving forward is from many, many hours of sitting motionless at your work station.

So get up and stretch your hands, arms and back, walk around, give your eyes a rest, just for a few minutes, a couple times a day. Don't forget to do some of the exercises shown above, at a minimum of once every evening. It will help with blood circulation, prevent some strain on your back and neck, and help correct your spine from buckling.

August 29, 2015

Wesley Louis drew 'Super Turbo Atomic Ninja Rabbit' as a comic when he was 13. It was time to realise the dreams of a geeky kid by animating the intro to the best TV-series that never was. 'Super Turbo Atomic Ninja Rabbit' A love letter to Saturday morning cartoons from the 80’s and 90’s.

Check out the awesome VHS version:

The making of this amazing intro to a mock 90s animated series: Once upon a time in 1991, a young Wesley Louis sat down with some colouring pencils, and started drawing a comic book about an armored rabbit with superpowers and a sword. Little did he know he had taken his first step on a journey that he wouldn’t see completed for another 24 years.

In 2013 Wes found the comic stuffed into the back of an old folder. 10 pages that, though unfinished, and slightly ravaged by time, perfectly captured all the joys and obsessions of a 13 year old child of the 90’s. Desert chrome, speedlines, ninjas, saturday morning cartoons, it was all there. The blueprint for his career, scrawled onto yellowing paper with a startling degree of skill.

He brought the comic into work and there was something about it that he and the crew couldn’t put down. Yes it was nostalgic, but more than that, it was a fully realized world, of heroes villains, and monkey sidekicks with guns.

Wes started to imagine what it’d be like if it were a real cartoon from the 90’s and before he knew it he had storyboarded the intro sequence. Rina May and Box of Toys Audio put together a rock solid theme song, and pretty soon everyone was hooked.